House bill makes ATM hacking an economic sabotage

MANILA, Philippines — The House of Representatives approved on third and final reading on Monday night a bill classifying the hacking of a bank’s computer system and of automated teller machine (ATM) cards as economic sabotage punishable by life imprisonment.

Eastern Samar Rep. Ben Evardone, who chairs the Committee on Banks and Financial Institutions, yesterday said the passage of Bill 6710 is the response of the House to the recent spate of disappearing deposits of many savers, including overseas Filipino workers, due to hacking.

Citing data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, Evardone said losses from ATM fraud “have surged alarmingly from P175 million in 2012 to more than P600 million in 2016 – a 250 percent increase in just four years.”

“Add to this the reported P500 million stolen through fraudulent credit card transactions in 2016 alone and one starts to get the scary picture. This has to stop,” he said.

He said aside from protecting bank depositors and ATM and credit cardholders, the bill would “increase security for OFW remittances totaling $33 billion each year, as well as the growing e-commerce/online shopping sector which accounted for P60 billion in revenues last year.”

He added that there are 76 million debit and prepaid cards currently in circulation, in addition to 8.5 million credit cards.

Bill 6710 is a consolidation of two proposed laws authored by Evardone and Cebu Rep. Ramon Durano IV, which sought to amend Republic Act 8484, or the Access Devices Regulation Act of 1998.

Numerous colleagues joined the two as co-authors, including Luis Raymund Villafuerte of Camarines Sur, Winston Castelo of Quezon City, Aurelio Gonzales Jr. of Pampanga, Evelina Escudero of Sorsogon, Raul del Mar of Cebu City, Ace Barbers of Surigao del Norte, Christopher de Venecia of Pangasinan, and Michael de Vera of party-list group Arts, Business and Sciences. The bill categorizes bank or ATM fraud as economic sabotage if it involves the hacking of a bank system, 50 or more ATM cards are affected, or 50 or more online bank transactions, ATM cards, credit cards and debit cards are involved.

Aside from life imprisonment, the offenses would be fined an amount ranging from P1 million to P5 million.